The Witches of Eastwick (1984). Content and Description

Published in 1984, The Witches of Eastwick is a novel about three witches, Sukie Rougemont, Jane Smart, and Alexandra “Lexa” Spofford, who have divorced their husbands, pursue their careers, and form a relationship with a mysterious “scientist” from New York, Darryl Van Horne. Van Horne seduces the witches by encouraging them to develop their talents. He uses them to get to Jenny Gabriel, the daughter of Sukie’s lover. Darryl marries Jenny, and she becomes pregnant. But, the spurned witches cast a spell on Jenny, giving her cancer. After she dies, Van Horne gives a parodic sermon at the Unitarian church, then leaves town with Jenny’s brother, Christopher, his new lover. The novel ends with the witches using spells to conjure new husbands and leaving Eastwick.

The two main themes in the novel are the emergence of evil in middle-class society and the relation of evil to feminism. The novel takes place in the 1960s during the Vietnam War. Eastwick is presented as a small middle-class Rhode Island town, distinguished by its provincialism. Yet this small town also seems to be a vortex of supernatural power, for not only does it attract the satanic Van Horne from New York, but the three witches claim that their powers increased when they arrived in Eastwick.

As a “scientist,” Van Horne is attempting to find a way to circumvent the second law of thermodynamics: entropy. By this he is attempting to consolidate and preserve power. This functions metaphorically, because, under his tutelage, the three witches’ powers increase. Van Horne seduces the women by pandering to their desire for power. However, by depending on Van Horne to feed their desires for power, they weaken their independence. Thus, ultimately Van Horne’s power increases.

Power is the central metaphor, especially as it applies to feminism. While The Witches of Eastwick presents some of Updike’s strongest female characters, his caveat is what happens when feminism is unchecked. The hedonism of the townsfolk reflects the shifting morals in the feminist age. As wives and mothers, the witches had existed in an entropic universe, not unlike Harry Angstrom’s world in the Rabbit tetralogy.

The witches represent Harry’s worst fear: In their desire for power, women abandon their role as wife and mother. Ironically, their emotional attachment to a man (Van Horne) ultimately becomes their undoing. Moreover, Updike offers a double blow when it is revealed that while Van Horne used the witches to get to Jenny, he used Jenny to get to her brother, Chris. When he finally leaves town with Chris as his new lover, he deflates the witches’ power.

Ultimately, The Witches of Eastwick is an antifeminist argument. First Van Horne rejects the witches in favor of the more demure Jenny. This makes him the model husband, a role the witches mocked at the beginning of the novel. The final twist—that Van Horne was really in love with Chris—indicates that he would prefer another man as a lover to a liberated woman. The resolution of Van Horne’s finding happiness with Chris and each of the women’s casting spells to create her ideal husband implies that the search for personal happiness triumphs over social ideology.

For Discussion or Writing:
1. In his sketch “Sights from a Steeple,” Nathaniel Hawthorne claims that the ideal narrator should be omniscient. However, the narrator’s desire for omniscience is presented as a threat to God, who alone is omniscient. Updike employs the third-person omniscient point of view in the novel. Discuss Updike’s use of a godlike persona to tell the story of the devil and three witches.

2. Why does Darryl Van Horne reference the dictionary and not the Bible when he delivers his sermon? How is the development of the dictionary similar to Adam’s job of naming the animals? What does it say about the foundation of religion?

3. Near the end of the novel, Jane says to Alexandra, “Lexa, don’t you understand? There was never anything there. We imagined him” (298). Explain the possibility that the existence of Darryl Van Horne was a figment of their collective imagination. Considering that their witchcraft was fantastic, is it possible that the whole story is, too?